AIDS: to remember the fallen: the Estate Project.

ALVIN ALLEY. Michael Bennett. Robert Joffrey. Rudolf Nureyev. Arnie Zane. These names offer only a glimpse of the devastation that AIDS wrought on the dance community. Hundreds of dancers and choreographers died during the peak years of the AIDS crisis in the last two decades of the 20th century.

Most of the energy and funds donated during that time (when the dance community generously stepped up to the plate) went toward research, education, and care for dancers with AIDS. But in 1991, the Alliance for the Arts, a New York-based arts advocacy and research organization, established the Estate Project-not just for dancers and choreographers, but also for writers, actors, designers, musicians, filmmakers, and architects-to deal with the secondary loss from AIDS: the art itself. "We heard stories about landlords going into vacated apartments and throwing work into dumpsters," says Randall Bourscheidt, president of the Alliance for the Arts. The intent of the Estate Project became threefold: to document the loss from AIDS in American culture and art; to provide practical estate planning advice to all artists, especially those with HIV and AIDS; and to preserve the cultural legacy of the AIDS crisis for future generations for both study and enjoyment as works of art and chronicles of history.

In 2003, UCLA dance scholar David Gere (author of the new book How to Make Dances in an Epidemic: Tracking Choreography in the Age of MDS) oversaw the creation of the Estate Project's Dance Archive, which is now accessible at their website (www.artistswithaids.org). Gere focused the dance archive on all choreographers whose work was impacted by the AIDS epidemic, not just those who have been physically afflicted by the disease. "Essentially, any choreographer who makes a piece about HIV/AIDS takes on the stigma of AIDS while working toward neutralizing it," says Gere. "Thus, this is not a list of choreographers with AIDS. Instead, it is a list of choreographers who have participated in larger communities of choreographic concern about AIDS." Those choreographers fall into three categories: choreographers living with HIV (like Bill T. Jones), their deceased partners and collaborators (like Zane), and artists, like Susan Marshall, who are physically untouched by HIV, but have been emotionally affected by the devastation of AIDS.

Divided into the three urban epicenters where AIDS took its greatest toll--New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco--the dance archive will eventually expand to include other cities. Each listing documents a choreographer and the works created, with biographical and contact information about the choreographer and any affiliated estate. Gere derived his research from the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, interviews, Internet searches, and word-of-mouth. A comprehensive listing of dancers and choreographers who died from AIDS complications is accessible on the same website under the heading, "National Registry of Artists with AIDS."

In October, members of the dance community convened at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts to read "love letters" to colleagues who have died of AIDS-related causes. Those letters will be posted on the website, along with other tributes people may wish to contribute. DANCE MAGAZINE readers can help fill in the blanks about overlooked dancers and choreographers who have died, or about dances created in response to AIDS. "We see this as a living, organic resource," says Bourscheidt. If you wish to furnish additional data, contact Brad Walter at [e-mail].

Bourscheidt stresses the historical significance of the archive. "The artists with AIDS who are enshrined in the Estate Project website," he says, "speak to their own time and future generations with the clearest eyes, the strongest hearts, and the loudest voices."